Extracts from DW's account of his RAF officers' intake course at Uxbridge

This intake course was not for men intending to become pilots or air-crew, but those who were going into administrative jobs, so my companions were mostly accountants, school masters, lawyers, garage proprietors and so on, round about thirty. I was a good bit older than most of them and, I think, the only one who had been an officer in the First World War.

My first act was to get hold of the airman servant. He told me that there was only one to each floor; so they had no time to do more than keep their room clean and the officers had to do their own boots and buttons. Having in the First World War had my own batman, a groom to look after my two chargers and a trumpeter to ride behind me, I had no intention of putting up with that sort of nonsense; so I told him that he would find time to clean mine and see to it that they were irreproachable; and that for so doing he would receive a pound a week. [Note: £1 then would be worth about £50 now - CB] At that his eyes popped. He promptly saluted and replied. “Yes, sir! Very good, sir!”

I then unpacked, but only my larger suitcase, as the other contained tinned luxuries and hard liquor.

…

Next morning each section was mustered to have its photograph taken. Our section leader sat in the middle of the front row and had on either side of him the very few of us who had medal ribbons. Next to me I had a slim, dark, little man who was sporting the Coronation ribbons of King George V - at which he had been a page - and VI. When the photograph had been taken he turned to me and said, “At one of the lectures yesterday when the feller who was telling us how to behave as officers and gentlemen said that we must end all our letters “Your obedient servant”, I could hardly prevent myself from laughing when you put in caustically “Does that apply to letters to our tailors?” and I thought at once I must get to know you.

[The individual in question turned out to be the Duke of Richmond, who from that moment on was to be a life-long friend - CB].

…

After I had been there a few days a bed was found for me in the dormitory on the ground floor, so I moved in with my more immediate companions. They were a cheerful lot so I got on well with them, but my transfer brought my airman servant to see me in some distress. He said that his mate, who looked after the ground floor, was kicking up a rumpus about his doing my boots and buttons. I promptly summoned both of them to meet me in the washroom during the lunch break. There I told them that one of them would do my boots and the other my buttons and they would receive ten shillings a week each. That sorted that.

It is amusing to recall that it was not until my last night in the camp that the chap occupying the next bed to me remarked as he polished away with a button stick, “Wheatley, I never see you cleaning your buttons. When do you do them?” With a laugh I replied, “I'm an old soldier. All through the course our airman servant has cleaned them for me.”

…

I had no scruples about making use of my row of medal ribbons and prestige as an author in other ways too. I have always had an intense antipathy to doing physical drill, and after twenty years of taking no exercise at all I was anything but fitted fit for it. I had been informed that under a K.R.A.F. regulation, physical drill was not compulsory for men over forty; so I asked for an interview with the Commandant and put this to him. He was a crusty old dug-out Group Captain. After asking me which branch of the R.A.F. I was going into, he showed a jealous disapproval of civilians being employed in the Air Ministry; then reprehensively questioned me about the job I was being brought in to do, which I refused to tell him. Then he said that like everyone else in the camp I would attend P.T. parades. That was that. But we were at least divided into age groups and mine was the senior with only five, over forty, companions. So I was able to make a joke of the whole thing with the corporal who took us and, instead of exhausting ourselves, we only played with a big ball. As I had spent five years of my youth dealing with N.C.O.s I had no difficulty at all in getting on excellent terms with all of them.

Nevertheless, the course proved quite an ordeal for me, both physically and mentally.

Source: DW's unpublished memoirs. Hitherto no part of this chapter has ever been published.